I was basically with you up to "Pan European". What is your argument for that? Every source I've ever encountered indicated the OT was Middle-Eastern/Asian, mostly detailing with the legacy and law of the Jews and sharing certain bits with the foundations of Islam. The NT Jesus is something of an amalgam of Indo-European God-Man myths, but I don't see what is Pan-European about the OT. The deluge is common across a lot of mythologies, but it makes more sense to assume its role in the Bible is adapted from the Mesopotamian flood stories.
Can someone please explain to me how to use a laser pointer to look at stars?
It's not so much for looking at the stars, but for sharing the experience of looking at the stars. Have you ever tried to point out a specific star (other than the brightest, most obvious ones) to someone else? It usually goes something like this:
Up there, see that one that's kind of reddish? Now go a little left and up? Got it? Now the one directly above that about twice as far away as the second was from the first? OK? Go just to the right of that about as far as the width of the full moon. That's the one...
Needless to say, it's frequently very hard to get two people, especially if one of them is inexperienced with observing the night sky, looking at the same point on the celestial sphere.
Now, the scenario with a green laser:
That one, right there. [points laser directly at the object of interest]
---
When this story started coming up, I was concerned because members of my astronomy club routinely use lasers for this purpose, and I for one had never considered we might inadvertantly blind a pilot!
I have no idea if this guy is on the level or not. Just trying to answer your question...
... that both atheists and theists will continue forever to present arguments for their positions that amount to nothing more than statements of belief.... that such "ultimate" questions as the existence of God are unprovable conundra that exist to confound and motivate us.... that the previous statement proves the existence of God.
Bonus Belief:
I believe I will receive many more replies from self-righteous atheists than from self-righteous theists.
Starting where you left off, I'm also grateful for the exchange. The banal things we (speaking of the community) usually get worked up on this board about seem pale and dusty compared to this sort of thing.
I've recently read some stuff about DCM (although it wasn't labelled as such) in Jewish sources. I wager these sources were considerably less heady than the one you cite, amounting basically to "Judaism for Goys" but the notion of morality requiring God was a big theme in them. I'll have to look up the book you mention and read a little more thorough treatment of the topic.
I find the issue of arbitrariness vs necessity a fascinating one. It seems to be that a truly omnipetent being would necessarily be arbitrary, because it would not be bound by any law of goodness external to itself?!
Re, the sinless Christ: I've also been long fascinated by this question. It was necessary to torture and kill Him in order to bring about His divine sacrifice (though no lamb on a Jewish altar ever suffered so). Judas, the villian of that story, is just as critical to its fulfillment as Jesus. In other words, by betraying Christ, he did much more to save the earth than any evangelist who's come along since! It makes the head spin...
Argument against strong dependence: P1: God is omnipotent and omniscient, unlimited. P2: The murder of an innocent person can never be a moral/ethical obligation. P3: If God's desires are the sole arbiter of morality/ethics (divine command), then it would be possible for P2 to be true. C: Thus, God is not the source of morality/ethics.
Bear with me. It's also been a long time since I was actively engaged with formal logic and philosophy.
I'm not sure what P1 contributes, and I can't see how P2 and P3 lead to C. P3 states merely that it would be possible for P2 to be true, but it is also equally possible for P2 to be false, however distasteful such an idea is to us. The only conclusion I can ferret out is that God cannot be the source of what you have chosen to accept as morality/ethics.
I frequently run up against this sort of thing when people claim to have proofs of anything related to divine nature (whether their conclusions be pro or con). Basically, it seems that people set out to prove that the definition of God they choose to work with can or cannot exist, and then derive the arguments, a triviality when you set up the initial conditions yourself.
I like to imagine God as the consciousness that gets a great laugh out of watching us go through this exercise.
BTW, you could make a case for at least one of the major world religions that noone is innocent using the doctrine of Original Sin. Let's not pursue this mental monkeywrench, though, as it leads surely into even less productive doctrinal squabble.
Aren't you making an awful lot of assumptions about the nature of the machines fixed? Is it worth it to patch 1000 spam zombies but bring down one air traffic control system?
It's not a question of building around the flaw, but of not knowing whether and testing whether the patch for the flaw will harm other, more critical services. I elaborated in a different reply:
You miss the point. If I have a system with a vulnerability on the network that is protected by an external layer of security (e.g. a firewall or gateway that blocks access to the vulnerable service) then the machine is effectively as invulnerable as if it had been patched (with respect to traffic from outside that gateway). Example: my httpd may have a security flaw, but if I have blocked port 80 at the firewall, then no request will ever be able to exploit that it.
It is routine security practice to test patches to ensure they do not have unintended consequences. A worm bypasses the system operator, and is therefore unacceptable.
As I closed in the original post, the situation is highly hypothetical and it is unlikely a system under such close management would be unlikely to be in the spread vector of a worm (i.e. it's probably not running an unsafe email client or unnecessary/unmonitored services). Nonetheless, responsibility for the security of a node rests with the operator of the node. A white worm has no more right or authority to enter uninvited than any other worm or virus.
In principle they seem good, but what about when a white worm installs a patch that interferes with legitimate operation of the system? It is perfectly possible a vulnerability was left alone by the operator because the patch would have rendered the system unusable and that security measures external to the vulnerable system render the vulnerability moot.
Of course, such machines aren't the ones likely to intersect common worm spread vectors...
There are only so many hours in a day and if you spend them doing something that you couldn't do in the past, you aren't going to have them to do things you would have previously done.
Even with this being a slow week, I'm not going to have time to do thorough research on the definitions and sources, but this is he part I was most interested in hearing:
Argument against strong dependence: P1: God is omnipotent and omniscient, unlimited. P2: The murder of an innocent person can never be a moral/ethical obligation. P3: If God's desires are the sole arbiter of morality/ethics (divine command), then it would be possible for this to be true. C: Thus, God is not the source of morality/ethics.
Before we go any further, can you clarify whether by "this" in P3 you refer to P2?
I'm going to assume this is a real philosophical debate and not just a remarkably subtle troll and join in, because it looks like fun...
This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap.
Maybe you should restate your syllogism. I don't see where you made any argument that leads to that conclusion.
Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.
Googling for
ethics "hard command" "soft command"
results in 0 pages found. I don't know if that's because there are no pages on the Web on the topic, because you used the wrong terms, or because there is no such thing. I find the first option pretty unlikely, so can you either correct your terms or give a short essay on what "hard vs soft command" means?
I'm also interested in how ethics point to the non-existence of God via contraction. I've read some pretty convincing material arguing exactly the opposite; that ethics necessarily come about via morality grounded in a belief in deity, but I've *never* heard and am having trouble imagining an argument that ethics points to the non-existence of God. Maybe what you mean to say is that your ethics are at odds with the nature you assume for God?
Aharonian said in his complaint he does not know whether he personally has run afoul of copyright laws because he has set up a database of thousands of computer programs to help software companies figure out if their products infringe on existing material.
If the owner of any of those programs decides to sue, he could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties and possible jail time.
Will the owner of one of these programs please sue him so he has something to do?
There's always my journal. Do those go archival or are they pretty much interminably editable?
Yeah, I'm alive as far as being pissed about people's political apathy anyway. It reminds me a lot of the eighties lately, but of course then I was one of the apathetic. =:-O.
My time is severely limited today, so I can't really do much citing, but I'd recommend you read Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel". It pokes some pretty big holes in a lot of the accepted mythology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The guy clearly has an agenda, but I've yet to see a lot of his claims falsified. I'd be particularly interested in a retort from Chomsky, but haven't had a chance to seek one out yet.
In what little time I have, I'd just assert that the Palestinians can blame generations of their leaders moreso than Israel for their current state of affairs.
Thank you for that post. I wish the mods had gotten this deep in the thread because what you said deserves to be heard.
I correspond frequently with my House rep and I have gotten numerous letters that were clearly directed, if not personally written, by him and not by an intern clipping "issue" boilerplate. His responses are thoughtful, and we frequently disagree, but I have no doubt that I am engaging his brain on these issues and giving him something to think about other than the lobbyist line.
Sometimes I get the stock letters and, providing they concur with my point of view, it pleases me when I do because that means there is enough grassroots momentum on the issue for the stock response to exist.
No kidding. Many of the "conservatives" on this site are just knee-jerkers out to start a flame war and call people they disagree with names (moron and retard being the most common). I used to work with a guy who was a sincere fiscal and religous conservative and we had a ball going at it every day at lunch; substantive arguments and (basically) civil discourse. You rarely get that here.
I am an unrepentant Deaniac myself, and I think that even if Bush had smoked him 90/10 in the general, the Dems would have been better for running him than a vacuous suit like Kerry. They were so afraid to offend the "center" that they shot themselves in the foot. The bottom line appears to be that the Republicans play that middle-of-the-road game better.
As for what's happened to Dean since the primaries, I have no idea what's up with that. They must have finally hit him with the orbital mind control lasers.
At the time, I thought the "even hand" for Israel and Palestine thing sounded like a good idea, but I've read a little more history of the conflict since, and I'm not so sure it's possible to be even-handed and on the side of justice. Maybe, just maybe, with Arafat gone, there will be a chance for cooler heads to prevail...
You are spot on about Ralph Nader, and I'm glad he's out there as a voice of dissent. It infuriates me how the Rs and Ds have achieved their market-sharing arrangement to effectively block out any viable third-party or independent candidate. I have to say that in the last election, though, I thought he did a disservice by running. There is a time to recognize that one of two evils will prevail and the more principled thing to do is step aside and let the lesser one do so.
You're right, to a greater or lesser degree, on all points of course. Mostly, I think you're niggling, but that's OK, so long as you don't use it as an excuse for apathy.
I'm just completely fed up with whiners and their excuses for not participating in their participatory government. Oh boo-hoo, the corporate media controlled blah blah right wing conspiracy woof woof government for hire ad nauseum. Sick of it. These bastards get their power from our tacit consent, and if we don't exercise our rights as citizens it is only natural that their will to power increases their position.
I stand by my point that if the citizens were actually engaged in their government instead of sitting back sucking down chicken wings and diet coke and wondering whether they should ask their doctor about prozac (or pounding away at a keyboard posting on/.) we would have a radically different society than the one we "enjoy" now.
BTW, I'm aware of the problems with the Hubble repair mission (Astronomy magazine recently had a good feature on it, too) and was wincing even as I used that example, knowing that someone would call me out on the technicalities. HOWEVER, I think that it was public outcry directed via congress that forced NASA to reevaluate their decision to abandon HST is still useful as an example of the kind of activism I'm describing.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but for some reason I can't understand, you are compelled to antagonize those who view the world differently from you. What motivates that?
I was basically with you up to "Pan European". What is your argument for that? Every source I've ever encountered indicated the OT was Middle-Eastern/Asian, mostly detailing with the legacy and law of the Jews and sharing certain bits with the foundations of Islam. The NT Jesus is something of an amalgam of Indo-European God-Man myths, but I don't see what is Pan-European about the OT. The deluge is common across a lot of mythologies, but it makes more sense to assume its role in the Bible is adapted from the Mesopotamian flood stories.
Heading to work once after a long night of Super Mario Bros, I saw a Koopah run across the road in front of me.
Couldn't find the jump button for my Galaxy 500, though...
It's not so much for looking at the stars, but for sharing the experience of looking at the stars. Have you ever tried to point out a specific star (other than the brightest, most obvious ones) to someone else? It usually goes something like this:
Up there, see that one that's kind of reddish? Now go a little left and up? Got it? Now the one directly above that about twice as far away as the second was from the first? OK? Go just to the right of that about as far as the width of the full moon. That's the one...
Needless to say, it's frequently very hard to get two people, especially if one of them is inexperienced with observing the night sky, looking at the same point on the celestial sphere.
Now, the scenario with a green laser:
That one, right there. [points laser directly at the object of interest]
---
When this story started coming up, I was concerned because members of my astronomy club routinely use lasers for this purpose, and I for one had never considered we might inadvertantly blind a pilot!
I have no idea if this guy is on the level or not. Just trying to answer your question...
Exactly. The only reason I can think of to "bother with" the idea is that it's frequently useful.
That may well be the funniest thing I've heard in months!
... that both atheists and theists will continue forever to present arguments for their positions that amount to nothing more than statements of belief. ... that such "ultimate" questions as the existence of God are unprovable conundra that exist to confound and motivate us. ... that the previous statement proves the existence of God.
Bonus Belief:
I believe I will receive many more replies from self-righteous atheists than from self-righteous theists.
Starting where you left off, I'm also grateful for the exchange. The banal things we (speaking of the community) usually get worked up on this board about seem pale and dusty compared to this sort of thing.
I've recently read some stuff about DCM (although it wasn't labelled as such) in Jewish sources. I wager these sources were considerably less heady than the one you cite, amounting basically to "Judaism for Goys" but the notion of morality requiring God was a big theme in them. I'll have to look up the book you mention and read a little more thorough treatment of the topic.
I find the issue of arbitrariness vs necessity a fascinating one. It seems to be that a truly omnipetent being would necessarily be arbitrary, because it would not be bound by any law of goodness external to itself?!
Re, the sinless Christ: I've also been long fascinated by this question. It was necessary to torture and kill Him in order to bring about His divine sacrifice (though no lamb on a Jewish altar ever suffered so). Judas, the villian of that story, is just as critical to its fulfillment as Jesus. In other words, by betraying Christ, he did much more to save the earth than any evangelist who's come along since! It makes the head spin...
Bear with me. It's also been a long time since I was actively engaged with formal logic and philosophy.
I'm not sure what P1 contributes, and I can't see how P2 and P3 lead to C. P3 states merely that it would be possible for P2 to be true, but it is also equally possible for P2 to be false, however distasteful such an idea is to us. The only conclusion I can ferret out is that God cannot be the source of what you have chosen to accept as morality/ethics.
I frequently run up against this sort of thing when people claim to have proofs of anything related to divine nature (whether their conclusions be pro or con). Basically, it seems that people set out to prove that the definition of God they choose to work with can or cannot exist, and then derive the arguments, a triviality when you set up the initial conditions yourself.
I like to imagine God as the consciousness that gets a great laugh out of watching us go through this exercise.
BTW, you could make a case for at least one of the major world religions that noone is innocent using the doctrine of Original Sin. Let's not pursue this mental monkeywrench, though, as it leads surely into even less productive doctrinal squabble.
Aren't you making an awful lot of assumptions about the nature of the machines fixed? Is it worth it to patch 1000 spam zombies but bring down one air traffic control system?
It's not a question of building around the flaw, but of not knowing whether and testing whether the patch for the flaw will harm other, more critical services. I elaborated in a different reply:
1 12 31983
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134480&cid=
You miss the point. If I have a system with a vulnerability on the network that is protected by an external layer of security (e.g. a firewall or gateway that blocks access to the vulnerable service) then the machine is effectively as invulnerable as if it had been patched (with respect to traffic from outside that gateway). Example: my httpd may have a security flaw, but if I have blocked port 80 at the firewall, then no request will ever be able to exploit that it.
It is routine security practice to test patches to ensure they do not have unintended consequences. A worm bypasses the system operator, and is therefore unacceptable.
As I closed in the original post, the situation is highly hypothetical and it is unlikely a system under such close management would be unlikely to be in the spread vector of a worm (i.e. it's probably not running an unsafe email client or unnecessary/unmonitored services). Nonetheless, responsibility for the security of a node rests with the operator of the node. A white worm has no more right or authority to enter uninvited than any other worm or virus.
In principle they seem good, but what about when a white worm installs a patch that interferes with legitimate operation of the system? It is perfectly possible a vulnerability was left alone by the operator because the patch would have rendered the system unusable and that security measures external to the vulnerable system render the vulnerability moot.
Of course, such machines aren't the ones likely to intersect common worm spread vectors...
Since when did the NYT become the Journal "Duh!"?
There are only so many hours in a day and if you spend them doing something that you couldn't do in the past, you aren't going to have them to do things you would have previously done.
Or am I missing something?
Before we go any further, can you clarify whether by "this" in P3 you refer to P2?
Maybe you should restate your syllogism. I don't see where you made any argument that leads to that conclusion.
Googling for
ethics "hard command" "soft command"
results in 0 pages found. I don't know if that's because there are no pages on the Web on the topic, because you used the wrong terms, or because there is no such thing. I find the first option pretty unlikely, so can you either correct your terms or give a short essay on what "hard vs soft command" means?
I'm also interested in how ethics point to the non-existence of God via contraction. I've read some pretty convincing material arguing exactly the opposite; that ethics necessarily come about via morality grounded in a belief in deity, but I've *never* heard and am having trouble imagining an argument that ethics points to the non-existence of God. Maybe what you mean to say is that your ethics are at odds with the nature you assume for God?
Will the owner of one of these programs please sue him so he has something to do?
You really aren't that familiar with the academic research process, are you?
Joke. Joke. Others have already given the straight answer...
There's always my journal. Do those go archival or are they pretty much interminably editable?
Yeah, I'm alive as far as being pissed about people's political apathy anyway. It reminds me a lot of the eighties lately, but of course then I was one of the apathetic. =:-O.
Dude, you are just a font of information. :-)
Looks like I've got a lot to read tonight...
Really good points on Dean and Nader.
My time is severely limited today, so I can't really do much citing, but I'd recommend you read Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel". It pokes some pretty big holes in a lot of the accepted mythology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The guy clearly has an agenda, but I've yet to see a lot of his claims falsified. I'd be particularly interested in a retort from Chomsky, but haven't had a chance to seek one out yet.
In what little time I have, I'd just assert that the Palestinians can blame generations of their leaders moreso than Israel for their current state of affairs.
Thank you for that post. I wish the mods had gotten this deep in the thread because what you said deserves to be heard.
I correspond frequently with my House rep and I have gotten numerous letters that were clearly directed, if not personally written, by him and not by an intern clipping "issue" boilerplate. His responses are thoughtful, and we frequently disagree, but I have no doubt that I am engaging his brain on these issues and giving him something to think about other than the lobbyist line.
Sometimes I get the stock letters and, providing they concur with my point of view, it pleases me when I do because that means there is enough grassroots momentum on the issue for the stock response to exist.
No kidding. Many of the "conservatives" on this site are just knee-jerkers out to start a flame war and call people they disagree with names (moron and retard being the most common). I used to work with a guy who was a sincere fiscal and religous conservative and we had a ball going at it every day at lunch; substantive arguments and (basically) civil discourse. You rarely get that here.
I am an unrepentant Deaniac myself, and I think that even if Bush had smoked him 90/10 in the general, the Dems would have been better for running him than a vacuous suit like Kerry. They were so afraid to offend the "center" that they shot themselves in the foot. The bottom line appears to be that the Republicans play that middle-of-the-road game better.
As for what's happened to Dean since the primaries, I have no idea what's up with that. They must have finally hit him with the orbital mind control lasers.
At the time, I thought the "even hand" for Israel and Palestine thing sounded like a good idea, but I've read a little more history of the conflict since, and I'm not so sure it's possible to be even-handed and on the side of justice. Maybe, just maybe, with Arafat gone, there will be a chance for cooler heads to prevail...
You are spot on about Ralph Nader, and I'm glad he's out there as a voice of dissent. It infuriates me how the Rs and Ds have achieved their market-sharing arrangement to effectively block out any viable third-party or independent candidate. I have to say that in the last election, though, I thought he did a disservice by running. There is a time to recognize that one of two evils will prevail and the more principled thing to do is step aside and let the lesser one do so.
I just hope that you are politically engaged. Allowing insight such as yours to be wasted due to cynicism and disillusionment would be a damn shame.
You're right, to a greater or lesser degree, on all points of course. Mostly, I think you're niggling, but that's OK, so long as you don't use it as an excuse for apathy.
/.) we would have a radically different society than the one we "enjoy" now.
I'm just completely fed up with whiners and their excuses for not participating in their participatory government. Oh boo-hoo, the corporate media controlled blah blah right wing conspiracy woof woof government for hire ad nauseum. Sick of it. These bastards get their power from our tacit consent, and if we don't exercise our rights as citizens it is only natural that their will to power increases their position.
I stand by my point that if the citizens were actually engaged in their government instead of sitting back sucking down chicken wings and diet coke and wondering whether they should ask their doctor about prozac (or pounding away at a keyboard posting on
BTW, I'm aware of the problems with the Hubble repair mission (Astronomy magazine recently had a good feature on it, too) and was wincing even as I used that example, knowing that someone would call me out on the technicalities. HOWEVER, I think that it was public outcry directed via congress that forced NASA to reevaluate their decision to abandon HST is still useful as an example of the kind of activism I'm describing.